Evaluation of Genetic Resistance to Common Bacterial Blight in Dry Edible Bean

Common bacterial blight (CBB) is an economically important disease of dry bean worldwide caused by Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. phaseoli, (Xap). The objectives of this research were to determine the frequency of CBB resistance in NDSU breeding materials and to evaluate the effectiveness of two SCAR markers, SAP6 and SU91, linked with major QTL for CBB resistance, across this host population. A total of 593 advanced and preliminary lines were phenotyped in the greenhouse and genotyped using SAP6 and SU91. Phenotyping revealed CBB resistance in 310 lines, with a higher frequency of resistant lines in the pinto, great northern and small red market classes. A total of 188 lines were phenotyped under field condition and only 23 lines were found resistant. The presence of the SU91 marker, and both markers in combination, more effectively identified CBB resistance than did the SAP6 marker alone. Identification of resistant lines should accelerate breeding efforts.Northarvest Bean Growers AssociationNorth Dakota Dry Edible Bean Seed Growers Associatio

Object search and retrieval in indoor environment using a Mobile Manipulator

Robots are increasingly viewed as service agents in offices and homes. In many countries where the average population is aging, robots can be used for elderly care. This Thesis explores one such possibility using a mobile manipulator robot. Such robots have a mobile base to move from one place to another and an arm to pick and place objects. This Thesis considers a problem where the mobile manipulator needs to search for an object in an environment and bring it to some location. The optimal object search is formulated in terms of the popular traveling salesman problem (TSP) that computes the optimal sequence in which the Robot can visit all the possible locations where the object can possibly be. Prior information about the more likely locations is brought in by scaling the edge-weight of the TSP graph through the probabilities of the location. The Thesis can combine the output of TSP with navigation and manipulation planning built on top of Robot Operating Systems (ROS) to build the complete object search and retrieval pipeline. The results of the Thesis are validated both in simulation and actual hardware experiments